marius wrote:The format line:
; Format : 3.3 / Absolute / MM / None
is not a standard Excellon item. It is a comment.
In Excellon it should be expressed as:
METRIC,TZ,000.000
You can also enter the parameters manually, before importing:
This is beside the point. I was trying to use the comment to manually configure ViewMate, but ViewMate does not permit me to do so. I could only choose 3.4 or 4.3 because it must be counting the minus sign as a decimal place. All four drill files were the same format, generated at the same time by a professional PCB package, but ViewMate could not recognize all the drill files in the same zip file as being the same format, nor could I manually set them to be the same format.
METRIC is specified in the files outside the comment, but ViewMate did not consistently recognize them as metric, sometimes they were Imperial.
Since I don't want to unzip them and import the files one by one, I have to clear ViewMate and reimport a few times and trial and error each and every one of the four drill settings every time. The key advantage of ViewMate to me is the fact that it can open the ZIP file directly without needing to be unzipped first. The consistent failure to import drill files correctly is the only real annoyance I have with it.